A is for Art is an abstract alphabet book. I was drawn in by its cover because of all the bright candy, but was pleasantly surprised by what the book consisted of. Not only could this book be used for primary school students learning letters, but it could also be used in an elementary English class, or in an art class. Letters are described by what the art is portraying, an example of this would be a painting of on egg, the words describing this are YUM YUM for the letter Y. There is then a description of the art and the author try's to use only words that correspond with the letter you are looking at. This could help children to begin pronouncing the letter in different ways and forms. Finally, one could use this book for an art class. Showing all the different types of art and the mediums. I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it because it was not your everyday alphabet book; it brought more to my mind then just learning letters, which I think, is important in a classroom setting.

I really enjoyed this unique perspective on an alphabet book; the concept of abstract art is maybe a little vague for children to understand, though I might not be giving them enough credit! I guess I'm thinking of the typical audience for alphabet books, primary level kids, mostly.

But anyway, whether one fully understands the ideas behind perception and representation, etc., kids can surely have a lot of fun trying to pick out the letters in each art piece and also in trying to think of words that the pictures represent. I had a lot of fun trying to guess the words the artist would use in each caption before I looked down at it.

A very unique, highly interactive alphabet book to spend a lot of time with! ( )

very good pictures which could encourage kids to make their own. lots of new words. after reading the other reviews, maybe all ages could make their own art with one letter and skip the reading. ( )

ABC Book that shows many different things related to the letter. It has a lot of collage, sculpture and painting. ( )

Man. This is a hard one to review, and the principle reason is that it's ABSTRACT .AND. avant guard .AND. for kids. Now having kids, I happen to know that abstract art is not the first thing they gravitate to in either museums or books. Similarly, most youngsters I'm around aren't drawn to language like:

Indoors, in an industrial interior, is an installation of individually illuminated, isolated, immobilized, immersed, inverted, identical, insoluble imitation ice cream cones.

Que? No seriously. This is the paragraph that accompanies the letter I. Obviously not meant for a practice reader, is it?

But given that, who "IS" the book for? Well, children that are attracted to Kandinsky come to mind. Except that some of the artwork is free-standing, like the "hordes of handmade, homogeneously hued, hollow hula hoops" in metal that look like a giant slinky. So maybe a constructionist oriented child.

As a mom that's all for the stretching of small minds, I'm all for exposure to different art and verbal materials and so I plugged away with this book to see what my two picked up and learned. The result was that my children dutifully looked at the book, but they never got very interested. Maybe because while the language resonates upon being spoken, it doesn't resonate with any meaning.

Because my children aren't the 'end all' of child audiences, I loaned this book to my son's kindergarten teacher from last year, to see what her class thought, and they had much the same reaction: unenthusiastic Therefore, I can only give this book a low middlin' rating and suggest that perhaps art teachers might use it with much older students than the one's I tried it out with.

Definitely this one will be a hit-or-miss type of purchase.

Pam T. for http://www.BooksForKids-Reviews.com ( )